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What’s the best way to form your initial team?

Paul Graham (Co-Founder & Partner at Y Combinator) Before the StartupYou can, however, trust your instincts about people. And in fact one of the most common mistakes young founders make is not to do that enough. They get involved with people who seem impressive, but about whom they feel some misgivings personally. Later when things blow up they say “I knew there was something off about him, but I ignored it because he seemed so impressive. “

Ben Erez (Product at Breeze) 22 Mistakes I Made as a First Time Founder — ViabilifyThe first few months starting a company with your friends is an absolute blast. I mean who wouldn’t want their daily schedule to revolve around hanging out with their best friends? As it turns out, if after a few months little to no significant progress has been made, you start getting over the whole “working with friends” thing.

Ben Yoskovitz (VP Product at VarageSale, VP Product at GoInstant (acquired by Salesforce), Author of Lean Analytics) Single Founders or Co-Founders?Why are 2+ founders (potentially) better? For me it’s about the camaraderie and partnership that emerges when two (or more) people decide to go on such an incredible journey together. And when the going gets tough (and it always does), it’s nice to have someone sitting beside you in the dark who knows exactly how you feel.

Ben Yoskovitz (VP Product at VarageSale, VP Product at GoInstant (acquired by Salesforce), Author of Lean Analytics) Single Founders or Co-Founders?So what about single founders? Single founders have an advantage in that they don’t need to build consensus with other founders. They may need to bring in additional senior talent, often on the technical side (which has its own challenges), but they’re 100% in control. There’s something just simpler about it overall.

David Cummings (Managing Partner at Shotput Ventures) Startups Should Say No to 99% of Partnership Opportunities | David Cummings on StartupsStartups should say no to 99% of partnership opportunities. Most partnerships never go anywhere and don’t make sense for the startup to invest significant effort into the relationship due to being time and money constrained. Partnership opportunities do make sense when there is significant skin in the game on behalf of the partner (e. g. large up-front fees) or a super minimal way to work together (e. g. less than 20 hours of work to get somethin… (read more)

Dharmesh Shah (Co-founder and CTO of HubSpot) Happy Birthday HubSpot! 9 Lessons From Our First 9 YearsDon’t defer the hard co-founder questions for later. They only get harder. Have the important conversation(s) with your co-founder early. Topics might include long-term goals, fund-raising, equity allocation, vesting, etc. I’ve written an entire article with some of the questions co-founders should ask each other.

Paul Graham (Co-Founder & Partner at Y Combinator) Startups in 13 SentencesPick good cofounders. Cofounders are for a startup what location is for real estate. You can change anything about a house except where it is. In a startup you can change your idea easily, but changing your cofounders is hard. [1] And the success of a startup is almost always a function of its founders.

Sam Altman (President at Y Combinator) Non-technical founder? Learn to hack – Sam AltmanWhen non-technical solo founders say “I’ll do whatever it takes to make this business successful” (which they almost always say), I say something like “Why not learn to hack? Although it takes many, many years to become a great hacker, you can learn to be good enough to build your site or app in a few months.

Paul Graham (Co-Founder & Partner at Y Combinator) Why to Not Not Start a StartupIf you don’t have a cofounder, what should you do? Get one. It’s more important than anything else. If there’s no one where you live who wants to start a startup with you, move where there are people who do. If no one wants to work with you on your current idea, switch to an idea people want to work on.

Ryan Howard (Founder @ Practice Fusion) Transcript: Protecting yourself as the founder; Ryan Howard | VatorNewsSecondly, along the same vein, if you’re starting the company with co-founders, you want to have clear vesting and rules for termination. If you have other co-founders, you should have rules where if something’s not going right, if they’re not showing up for work, that you guys have as adults, put something together. If you have a co-founder that’s no longer showing up, but they own half the company, that can be hugely problematic. Also, I’ve see… (read more)

Ryan Howard (Founder @ Practice Fusion) Transcript: Protecting yourself as the founder; Ryan Howard | VatorNewsYour employment agreement – this is where the key and this is another place where I made a major mistake. My recommendation is some time you incorporate and sometime around the time you’re closing your Series-A financing that you come up and put together a robust employment agreement. If you think about your relationship with the company, you’re likely being engaged to that company longer than most of your personal relationships. This is more of … (read more)

Ryan Howard (Founder @ Practice Fusion) Transcript: Protecting yourself as the founder; Ryan Howard | VatorNewsOne of the key terms that should be in your employment contract is a cure provision. Effectively, a cure provision is that if there’s something wrong and the board wants to terminate you, you have time to actually mitigate it. They give you fair notice, you have a dialogue, you understand what the issue is and you have time to mitigate it. It’s an incredibly fair term in my opinion and something that should be in everyone’s employment contract.

Peter Thiel (Co-Founder & Partner at Founders Fund) PAYPAL MAFIA: Reid Hoffman & Peter Thiel’s Master Class at CEIBS – YouTubePeople often ask these questions about traits entrepreneurs have and I think they often have on these things are almost opposite traits that are almost combined. So you want to be very open minded but you also have to be somewhat stubborn. You want to iterate very quickly and change things very quickly but you also want to have some sort of a long-term strategy.

Lee Hower (General Partner of NextView Ventures) Playing Startup – NextView VenturesI fear a meaningful number of people are “playing startup” today. What I mean is that people are joining startups because working in a startup seems cool or lucrative, not because they want to change the world and they’re fundamentally committed to putting in all the blood, sweat, and tears that entails.

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) The Similarities Between Building and Scaling a Product and a Company – AVCPutting together the initial team, creating the culture, instilling the mission and values into the team are all like designing and building the initial product. It is largely about injecting your ideas, values, and passion into the team. You do that by selecting the people carefully and then working hard to get them aligned around your vision and mission. Putting a product into the market and building your initial team are largely about realizin… (read more)

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) The Management Team – While Building Product – AVCBuilding product is not about having a large team to manage. It is about having a small team with the right people on it. You need product, design, and software engineering skills on the team. And you need to be focused, committed, and driven. Management at this point is all about small team dynamics; everyone on board, working together, and getting stuff done. Strong individual contributors are key in this stage. Management skills are not a requ… (read more)

Fred Wilson (Co-Founder and Partner at Union Square Ventures) If You Aren’t Technical, Get Technical – AVCA few years ago, I was doing some sort of public speaking thing and in the Q&A, a young man asked me for advice for founders who aren’t technical. I said, “If you aren’t technical, I suggest you get technical” And I meant it. I learned to code when I was a teenager. It wasn’t that hard. I think anyone who has the motivation to start a company can find the motivation to learn to code.